Oh, I'm Counting the Days
by WhatBecomesOfYou
Summary: After a summer of kind-of-but-not-really being together, Quinn and Puck separate to different coasts for the fall: him in California, her at Yale. Except that he finds that maybe, just maybe, he wants things to be a little more permanent between them. ...Except that Quinn's all the way on the other side of the country now... Puck/Quinn, post-season 3.
1. Summer: Worlds Together

**Author's Note:**_ Written for puckbigbang 2012. I started writing this after the end of the third season, so it is AU is from 3.22 forward, although it takes certain S4 revelations about Puck's family as canon. Rated T for now, but goes to M later on.  
_

* * *

_Maybe some day we'll meet again  
__when our two roads hit the same dead end  
__and o-oh I'm counting the days_

- "Your X-Rays," by Jets to Brazil

"I'm really going to miss you," Quinn says one night late in the summer, as she cups his cheek in her hand and kisses him with an odd mix of tenderness and longing. Tidy boxes are stacked in the corner, labeled with things like "dorm dishes" and "books," and it's a constant reminder of what is coming their way. Sooner or later, and it's sooner for them. Everything good has to come to an end sometime - which includes his friends' summer vacations. Not for him, though. He's going out to southern California in search of the proverbial eternal summer, where the temperature never gets below 80 during the day. And, as an added bonus, if that song from that shitty radio station his mother sometimes puts on in the car is accurate, it never rains there either. He could do without rain in his life. There's been enough tears shed in his lifetime; not that he shed many of them, at least that he would admit, but -

He wants to invite Quinn to come out to California with him. They could rent some crummy apartment and she could go to some school out there - if fucking _Yale_, of all places, accepted her, she could go to just about any school in the country - and yet, he knows that dude, crushing a girl's dreams isn't the best way to win her heart. Especially Quinn's, because she's worked harder than just about any of them to get the fuck away from the "Lima Loser" stereotype and actually make something out of herself. He may have missed out on whatever day at school they taught a lot of the fine intricacies of getting a girl to like you beyond a continuous series of mindless fucks, but he knows that much for sure.

Once he gets an idea in his head though, it's hard to dislodge it. He's stubborn like that, but he refuses to acknowledge the idea with vocalizing it. It's an insane thing to ask of anyone, and they've only been in this loose form of whatever-the-fuck-they-are since right after graduation. It's not quite dating, but it's not quite mindless fucking - could it even be mindless fucking with no sex involved? And while he's not one to grasp at sticking a label on anything, he's unsure on whether she'd say "fuck yeah!" or "fuck no!" - or whatever it is that she would say - and he's not willing to risk it. Yet.

He finds himself blindly nodding in acknowledgment of her words; he grasps her tightly, pulling her down against the bed. The mattress lets out an indignant squeak as he looks her in the eye and slips a lock of hair behind one ear. "I -" he pauses. It's not often that people get to see his softer side, but there's something about Quinn that has always brought it out. Maybe it's the mere fact that Beth exists, splitting their shared DNA into one crazy-awesome little girl. "I'll miss you too." He pulls her close to him and rocks her against his chest. "When do you leave?"

"Tuesday," she whispers, scraping her fingernails gently along the side of his jaw and frowning. "My mother's driving me up then. Orientation starts Friday."

"Two days."

She nods. "Just because we're going to be on different coasts doesn't mean we have to stop talking."

"And just because we're going to be on different coasts," he says, echoing her words back to her, "doesn't mean I'm going to cave in and get a Facebook or a Twitter or whatever the hell it is you and the rest of that club have these days. I don't need to know how often you shit or poke Berry."

"I don't _shit_ Rachel." Her whole face smiles as she laughs, and it's in the moments like this that he wants to hold onto. Maybe if only because he's not used to hearing Quinn use the word "shit" so freely. "But I won't ask you to."

He holds her there for a moment longer, feeling the loose ends of her hair brushing at his face as she buries her face in the crook of his neck. She smells _really_ good - she always has some flowery or fruity smell, probably from those fancy body washes he's seen her carry in her locker for after Cheerios practice - but he can't identify the smell right now, and it's bugging the shit out of him. And he's not going to admit it to anyone if they asked - and if they did, he'd punch them, because you don't play it like that with him - but he doesn't want to let go of her, because then it makes her impending move to Connecticut all too real and daunting.

They don't move. Her soft breathing - she's fallen asleep on top of him, he realizes, and he's not in a position to move without waking her up, and he's seen what she's like when she wakes up suddenly. Not a pleasant sight in the least. So he allows himself to think about falling asleep there with her using him as a form of a human pillow, her hair fanned out over his chest and draped over his shirt just so.

She smells like some sort of really pretty, really fragrant flower. It's probably one of those flowers that looks all innocent and sweet and then has like kickass fangs or something inside it - like a daisy concealing a Venus flytrap. Whatever it is, it's also probably going to be the smell he most easily associates with her, he thinks with a smile as he finally closes his eyes and succumbs to sleep.

* * *

Rules of being acquainted with Quinn Fabray: you did not, under any conditions whatsoever, spend the night in the Fabray house if you are an unrelated member of the opposite gender, unless you were Frannie's husband Paul. And even then, there is to be no touching.

Rules he breaks that night: that one.

Fucks he gives: none.

Her mother chases him out of the house that morning, warm frying pan in hand, yelling frantic obscenities at him. He's not sure if the reason is more because he broke that sacred rule, or because it was _him_ - the guy that fucked their entire family dynamic to hell and back. Would it have been different if it was Finn? Or - hell, even Sam, the "good Christian boy?" - who wasn't quite as innocent as he seemed, if the locker room rumors were to be believed about what went on behind closed doors at the Hudson-Hummel house. Convincing Mrs. Fabray of that though would be a task he would not want to undertake.

He sees her staring out her window forlornly, and she presses her palm to the pane of glass, and he has to turn away because the last thing he wants to do right now is drive away, but her mother is coming toward his car with an evil glare in her eye. And so he speeds away from the Fabray house as Quinn watches, his tires screeching on the pavement.

It feels like that thing they had to read once for that class freshman year. With the chick and the dude and they talked really strange and their families fucking hated each other and yet the two of them couldn't keep their hands off each other...

Didn't they _die_ at the end of that though?

...Fuck.

* * *

The difference between that thing he was thinking of and his life though is that his mother actually _likes_ Quinn. Considers her some sort of fake-daughter-figure, which has to piss his sister Sarah off, even though: actual daughter, fake daughter - totally not the same thing at all. He thinks his mother just likes Quinn because she's got a future locked up, and it's not one that involves getting dirty on a daily basis cleaning up after richer people than her. And, okay, the mothering-her-first-grandchild thing definitely helps, now that they're past the drama that surrounded the conception and the birth. Even if Shelby never really gives them updates. Not that he can blame her.

"How's Quinn?" his mother asks, looking up from a stack of bank statements and her highlighter, as he walks in the door and throws his messenger bag over the side of the kitchen chair.

"She's cool. Pumped about Yale. Her mother's a psycho though."

"_Noah_ -" she says with a sigh and a shake of the head, pinching her forehead between her fingers and setting the highlighter down on the table. "You didn't, did you?"

"No!" he exclaims. "Fuck, Mom, we just cuddled. That's it. I fell asleep. She overracted."

"You can see why she did though."

He can. And does, really. But he's not ready to start giving Beth any more siblings - or a free coupon to see the friendly neighborhood therapist at the tender age of two. "I know," he says simply, grabbing a strawberry Pop-Tart from the box on the counter and angling to walk out of the room. "Try telling _her_ that."

In contrast to Quinn's tidy orderliness, his move is a hodge-podge of everything that he owns, shoved into a series of duffel bags and scattered across the floor of his bedroom. He kicks angrily at the one closest to his door as he walks in - it could be clothes, it could be something else entirely, and that's going to be half the fun of unpacking it when he finds his flea trap new home out there.

It'll be like his birthday came early this year, in August instead of November, and if he was getting boring things he already owned instead of awesome new things. And whoever did the wrapping sucked and just threw things in bags he already owned.

He flops down on his bed and covers his eyes with his hand. Fuck this day. Fuck Lima. Fuck Yale. Fuck Mrs. Fabray - okay, maybe he wouldn't go _that_ far, regardless of his admitted fondness for Team MILF.

This whole situation just _blows_, he thinks, throwing a t-shirt aimlessly at one of the bags. It ricochets off the bag and lands on the carpet below. Even his aim is off today, and that's usually one of the things that isn't affected by things like chicks or Finn's weird-ass problems that somehow always end up affecting him. With Finn already off to Georgia though, that should no longer be a problem. The Army will just have to deal with how fucked they all are if Rachel decides to break up with him to experiment with Brittany or something. Still, _so_ not his problem anymore.

* * *

**Quinn**: puck i need to see you before i leave. :(  
**Puck**: babe ur momd kill me  
**Quinn**: come to the park by my house early tomorrow morning?  
**Puck**: how early  
**Quinn**: 7?  
**Puck**: ok cya then  
**Quinn**: see you :)

* * *

Things Puck hates doing: waking up early. Especially when it's not a school day, because fuck if anyone should know what seven in the morning looks like without first partying all night to get there.

Things Puck is doing: driving to the damn park by Quinn's house at seven in the morning. Which involved waking up early in the first place. Even if he hit the snooze button a million times in the process.

Things Puck would tell someone he knows if he were to see them waving on the side of the road right now: that he's doing it because Quinn wants it and he's not one to say no to her.

Things Puck would tell no one. Okay, maybe Quinn if she were to ask and do that little fluttery thing with her eyelashes that no one else quite knew how to do the way she did: that he's doing it because he genuinely wants to say goodbye. Because he doesn't think he can leave Lima without doing it.

It's just as much for him as it is for her, and he's not sure if she realizes that, but she's sitting on one of the swings as he walks up to her, gliding back and forth with the skilled ease of someone who spent a lot of time on them at an earlier point in their lives. She scuffs the heel of her sandals against the sand as she halts her glide, and she looks up at Puck. "Hey," she says, and he sits on the swing next to hers. As he does so, he begins twisting the chains up and down in a mindless pattern that he had perfected as a child. The release would be the highlight of the exercise, the exhilarating rush of the spin-out. She smiles and scoots her swing back and forth, a sitting version of a hip shake, and the rattling of the chains sounds across the sky.

"Hey," he echoes. The early morning sun is framing her face, and for a brief moment, he can almost forget why they're even there in the first place. He can almost forget that this isn't the two of them meeting up for an early morning fling - if they even left each other the night before - he can almost forget that this is the last time he'll see her until whenever it is again that they cross each other's paths.

Until she opens her mouth again, and the illusion that this is anything other than a rare, weird morning encounter with her is shattered. "I wish we had known each other when we were kids," she says softly. "Then we could have some story about how we met when you pushed me into a mud puddle when I was wearing my best frilly pink dress, or that you threw insects in my hair or some ridiculously childish thing like that."

"I would have done it too. Any of it. Except I always liked paint as a weapon better. Mud is too easy."

"Wasn't it at the first football game freshman year?"

"What?"

"When we met. The first football game, freshman year. I stumbled on the pyramid, you laughed from your place warming the bench, and I called you an insensitive ass for it after the game."

"I'm still surprised Coach Sylvester never reamed you out for that."

"It helped that Cassandra accidentally flashed Section B that night. Took the heat off me on Monday, somewhat."

"Good." He doesn't like thinking about the times when he was nasty to Quinn. In all fairness, it was before he knew her as well as he does now, but he still can't help but feel a twinge of remorse for it. He drops his hand to the side of the swing and takes her hand in his. "I'm sorry for laughing that night."

"Don't be sorry," she says, her voice airy and light as she takes the apology from him and processes it, "I'm not." They fall into a comfortable silence, swaying back and forth, not letting go of each other's hands the entire time. "Do you regret it? Any of it?"

"For the laughing that night?"

"Any of it."

"Ignoring you for all of junior year sucked. Especially since you were stuck sucking face with Guppy instead."

"And you were with Lauren," she says, without skipping a beat. Lauren and Sam would always be the ones that stood in their way. Not that he didn't like Lauren at the time. She was pretty fun and tended to kick his ass at Halo multi-player. Only girl he ever met who could. But there was a difference between Lauren and Quinn that made all the difference: Quinn believed in him, even when he didn't really deserve it. Lauren - well, didn't, as much.

"And Beth was -" As soon as he says it, he knows he shouldn't have. Beth will forever be the one who got away from them both, living a life as a Corcoran instead of a Fabray. Or a Puckerman. He can give Quinn the world on a shoestring budget, and he can give her a million children if she wanted them with him, but the one thing she wants the most is the one thing she can never have again. Barring a kidnapping attempt or something out of one of those soap operas he used to watch with his mother on days he was home sick from school. People were always having babies swapped or people getting custody of kids they didn't before or some crazy shit like that.

"She was with _Shelby_." For a moment, he sees a peek of the old Quinn, the one who stumbled off cheerleading pyramids and ruled the school with an iron fist. He can hear the verbal venom dripping off her voice as she says the name of the one person who has what she so desperately desires. And then she snaps right back into form, almost like it's easier to forget than it is to remember. "Everything was messed up back then. But then you came back."

"Babe, I never left. Except to go to juvie, but no one here seems to remember that."

"I do," she says, squeezing his hand gently. "School wasn't the same without you. Even if we weren't talking, it still wasn't the same. Not without you." The tears are beginning to form in her eyes, and the morning has reached its climatic moment. "I don't want to go. Not yet." It comes out almost as a whine instead of a mere statement.

"When do you have to go?" He stands up and takes her with him, tugging her to her feet. Wrapping his arms around her, he feels her heart beating fast - _so_ fast - underneath his touch; he can't help but relish in the fact that her heart probably never beat this fast when Finn or Evans held her like this, and if it did, he didn't ever want to hear about it. He is never second best to _anyone,_ but it would hurt even more if one of those two was the one that outshined him with regard to Quinn's feelings.

"Soon." Wet tears plaster her face; they create a shimmering effect that reflects the light from the sun onto her face, and she's almost glowing with how bright it all is. "_Too_ soon." He takes the pad of his thumb and swipes it gently across her cheekbone, streaking the teardrops into finely smudged lines. "Don't make me go." Her voice has cracked, and she's pleading with him to do - well, he isn't sure what she's _exactly_ asking for, but it's something out of his control, that much he knows.

"Go to Connecticut," he whispers. "Go there, show them what being Quinn Fabray is all about. Kick their rich, snobby asses."

"And what if I don't?"

"You will. I _know_ you will." He tilts her chin up with the crook of his index finger to create the eye contact that was missing between them, and he kisses her; his lips graze against hers. It's not much. Considering what they've done in the past, it feels downright tame by their standards. But this isn't some heated exchange in the privacy of one of their homes - or a secret meeting in that damn choir room where they spent way too much of their time over the past three years. They may be the only ones around, but only for a brief, tantalizing moment, before some snot-nosed little kid would have the chance of getting a very basic sex ed course from the two of them. She leans into the kiss, almost silently begging for him to continue; instead, he nips at her lower lip before breaking away and frowning slightly at the watery expression in her eyes. "What's wrong?"

"I hate saying goodbye," she says, sniffling as she looked up at him. "I already said goodbye to everyone else yesterday."

"So, you saved the best for last, naturally."

"Naturally." She laughs and runs the palm of her hand over his t-shirt, and he shudders at the tenderness of her touch. It's something that he doesn't feel too often. It's special. It's - well, it's _Quinn_. And Quinn is always going to be one of those people that's impossible to forget. Her phone vibrates from inside her cardigan pocket, and she groans. "It's my mom," she says. "I think she's probably wondering where I am."

"And she'd flip her shit if she knew you were with me."

"She would."

"Sorry," he says in a husky whisper. But he isn't sorry. Not at all. And he pulls her closer to him, so close that he can feel every inch of her skin pressed up against his own, only separated by two or three thin layers of cloth. Ducking his head slightly, he kisses a spot behind her left ear, before tracing a path with his lips and tongue working in tandem toward her own lips. This time, it's not chaste, it's not simple, it's pouring all of their pent-up emotions into one final action.

It's the perfect goodbye.

_Fuck_.

"See you in December," she says, as she turns to face him as she walks away, toward her house, toward her mother, toward Connecticut. "Have fun in California."

"See ya," he replies, walking in the direction from which he came a short time before; it so happens to be the opposite direction from Quinn's destination. "Kick ass."

It's only when he gets in the car and begins to drive that he realizes that, all told, it only took about ten minutes or so for them to wrap up almost four years of knowing each other into something suitable to hold them off until December. Or whenever it is that both of them get back to Lima at the same time. He makes a mental note to double-check when the first night of Hanukkah is, as he drives back to his house to throw the last of his bags into the trunk and say his own goodbyes to his mother and Sarah. If Fabray has hit the road running toward her new life in Connecticut, then he's going to make tracks toward California.

Nothing more is holding him here. Not anymore.

* * *

"Remember to call," his mother says, hugging him tightly and pecking at his cheek, "and don't run out of gas in the middle of Colorado."

"If I do, I'll just stick my thumb out and hitchhike," he replies.

"You will do _no such thing_," she says, laughing even as she glares daggers at him. "That's how you end up as the lead story on the eleven o'clock news: Ohio native found mutilated in rural Colorado canyon, he should have listened to his mother and he'd still be alive."

"Relax," he says, patting her arm and kissing the top of her head. "I won't. It was a joke. Promise." Pausing to let the tension in her face ease a bit, he continues, "I'll only get in the car if the driver is smokin' hot. And female."

"_Noah_ -" The daggers are coming back, and he ducks his head to avoid the worst of her glare. If looks could kill, he'd be on the eleven o'clock news tonight instead of in a week or so. "You better still be joking."

"What do you _think_ I'm doing?"

"Scaring your poor, doting mother into having a heart attack and putting her in an early grave?"

"Something like that." He beams at her, and she lightly swats at the top of his arm. Sarah comes up to him and wraps her arms around his waist, and he moves to hug her. "Are you going to bring home boys to scare Mom?"

"I'm _twelve_!" she protests, removing one arm from his waist to plant her hand firmly on her hip. "Boys are gross, anyway."

"And they better _stay_ that way until you're an AARP member," he says, elbowing her in the side, causing her to start giggling profusely. "I don't want to hear about you bringing home some douche kid with a fucking puka shell necklace just because he's the first person to notice you're not just some paste-eating kid in pigtails anymore."

"_I never ate paste_!" She puts her hands on her hips as she yells.

"Says you." He looks up at the kitchen clock; the second hand motors around the familiar chicken and her eggs that have never hatched, despite the fact that he has seen this clock every day since he was a kid, and he frowns as the minute hand ticks by. "Need to go though. Crazy-Eyed-Hitchhiker-Picker-Upper is waiting." The thought of driving for three solid days did not excite him, but at least it'd give him a lot of time to think about his life and shit. He hugs his mother and sister tightly one last time, squeezing them. Once he walks out that door, he knows nothing is ever going to be the same between the three of them. Sarah's going to have to learn to fend for herself, and his mother is no longer going to have her baby boy to rely on.

"Bye," his sister says, retreating to the corner of the kitchen. "If an axe murderer kills you, can I have your room?"

"Sure, whatever," he replies, extricating himself from his mother's tearful embrace. "If a psycho kidnaps you, can I have your - wait, you don't have anything I want. Nevermind."

His sister sticks out her tongue at him, and his mother dabs at the corners of her eyes and her cheeks with the edge of her sleeve, and he's really going to miss them in an odd way. For so long, it was just the three of them, and now it's going to be just the two of them alone together. Sarah's going to have be the one to remember the extra fortune cookies on the High Holidays now. "See you at Hanukkah," he says, and with a final tilt of his head and an appropriately subdued smile, he walks out the front door and throws himself into the car.

California, here comes Puckzilla.

-_to be continued_-


	2. Fall: Worlds Apart

The second night out from Lima, he finds himself in the middle of Utah. It's not quite Colorado, but it probably works much the same as what his mother was fearing. Before this trip, he barely knew that there even _was_ a Utah, and now he's staying overnight in some town called Green River - there's not much in the way of green around here, but there's a river snaking near the town, so he counts there being one out of two as a success in advertising.

A tattered pamphlet shoved between the nightstand and the wall advertises Friendship Cruise 2009, and he frowns. This place was cheap and more importantly, was the closest place to California he could have gotten to without passing out behind the wheel of his car. And then his mother _would_ have reasons to be mad at him. But he can't help but feel like this place hasn't had too many guests in the intervening years. Maybe he'd wake up in the middle of a gravel pit somewhere and this is all a crazy, whacked-out hallucination with some weirdly awesome drugs. Although, if that is the case, he wishes his hallucinations involved more of the rocking celebrity lifestyle and less of boring, mundane Utah - or Nebraska, like last night's motel had been. He mashes the pamphlet into a ball and throws it up at the ceiling as he lays on the bed.

He's _bored_.

If Finn was here, they could get drunk on cheap, illegally-gotten beer and find some local girls to party with until dawn - if there were any that were out of elementary school but not yet married. But, knowing Finn, they would more likely end up drunk-dialing Rachel in her new apartment in New York City and Finn would whine about how much he missed her, and he would make inappropriate comments that would lead to Rachel never wanting to speak to either of them again. Maybe she'd talk to Finn again. When he was sober. In theory, he could do the partying thing with any of his guys, or even by himself, but there's always something the most fun about doing it with Finn. And there's nothing more pathetic than partying by yourself.

He's not even going to think about what he could be doing if Quinn was here. At the very least, he'd have a warm body pressed up against him and keeping him company, her arms folded over his shoulders and her thigh pressed against his. Even if it was completely non-sexual and platonic and everything that he's not used to not being with girls.

It would mean that they were something more than all that, if she was with him.

He rolls over in bed and stares at the cracks in the ceiling plaster, wondering what it is about Quinn, _specifically _Quinn, that can drive him so crazy like this. It's not just any girl. There is something special about her that goes above and beyond anything else. And he's unsure of what it is, exactly. It's more than just Beth, that much he knows.

He turns on the television - there's not much here, not even cable - and ends up on an old, static-filled _Frasier_ rerun. It looks boring as fuck; everyone's in suits and ties and fancy dresses, but it's better than public-access news with tinny background music. Fuck if he cares what the elementary school's lunch menu is for the first day of school, or how many fish you're allowed to catch.

Before he realizes it, he falls asleep, grasping the pillow tightly; the long days of driving have taken their toll on him.

And his dreams that night are of dancing with Quinn like they did in the episode. He would spin her and dip her, hold her close to him. And then the dreams shifted, and they would run off, hand in hand, and he would press her against the wall of the ballroom, in some dank corner no one could find them in. He would hike up the skirt of her dress - probably some red, short, flippy thing - and bury himself to the hilt inside her.

And he wakes up in his motel room, freezing, _oh-so-fucking_ hard, and so very much alone.

* * *

"Welcome to California," the sign on the side of the interstate read, in yellow script against a blue background. "Now entering Pacific time."

Finally, he has reached his destination. It doesn't matter that he still has a couple more hours to go before he reaches Los Angeles; it doesn't matter that he's out in the middle of a desert somewhere.

What matters is that he made it. And now he doesn't have to look back. He never has to look back. There's thousands and thousands of pools here; there's thousands and thousands of people who have left their homes like him and followed their dreams to the glitz and the glamour of the big city. He's not seeking that life. He's not going to pay his dues by waiting on celebrities in Hollywood, living on the hopes that an agent takes pity on him one day and decides to have him audition for the role of a dead naval officer on NCIS or the brainless one-episode love interest to distract from the main relationship at hand on some laugh-track sitcom. After all, pretty much every actor in Hollywood has to have some experience on a crime show before they can move onto bigger and better things.

Although if some record label happens to be looking for a more badass version of John Mayer, then he's not going to say no. Not that he thinks that he's like John Mayer, not at _all_, but they both play the guitar, and Sarah's made the comparison before - not before he threw a pillow across the room at her, but she's made it nevertheless.

California, Puckzilla is here. And he's not going away anytime soon.

Not if he can help it.

* * *

"Hey, Quinn?"

He calls her for the first and only time since the morning in the park about a month and a half after he gets there, late on a Tuesday afternoon his time. He's unsure on if he's interrupting some sort of ice-breaking exercise that involves solving the rain in Spain or hunger in Hungary or whatever. But instead, she just laughs. "Puck. You're -" she pauses, and he bets that she's pinching her forehead between her fingers and wondering why this douche from high school decided to call her today, "_not_ the person I was expecting to hear from today."

"Were you expecting to hear from Finn?"

"No, I have friends here too, _God_. Mathilde is supposed to be arranging a marathon study session for our psych midterm, and I was waiting to hear from her."

And with that, it becomes crystal clear that he's not a part of her life at Yale. That much is obvious, because it's not like he's studying for midterms - thank God, or whoever - and the only friends he can say that he's met since he moved out here are his clients, however few and far between they are. And it's not like he's actually friends with any of them. Whatever he is to them ends the second he pulls away from their driveway. He doesn't have any new friends or a fancy new life, and here she is, doing all of those and more. And with people named _Mathilde_ of all things. What happened to cool, normal names? Like Puck. Or Jackie. Not some snooty, prep school refugee bitch with an impossible-to-pronounce name, and she probably had an attitude to match.

"So, what _are_ you doing, then?"

"I'm not lounging around in a bra and silk panties, if that's what you're asking."

"Damn. Didn't say you were." And now he's trying to picture it, those long legs and demure smile and that golden hair flipped coyly over one shoulder. It's not a sight he has seen too many times, especially not in any way, shape or form what could be considered a seduction. But it's not an unwelcome thought. Maybe he would have to convince her to try phone sex one of these days, and he mentally runs through his list of dirty talk phrases that could send Quinn into a quivering mass of feisty blonde seductress within two seconds flat. And then she speaks, again, and shifts his line of thinking considerably. Besides, she would never agree to it.

"Down, Puck. It's too cold for that here; it _is_ Connecticut in October, after all. I'm trying to figure out what I can make for dinner. Broke until Friday, so it's whatever's here."

He's no Iron Chef, but he _does_ know a thing or two about cooking. Those were the perils of being a latchkey kid with a younger sister who relied on him and a mother who didn't always get home from work until closer to bedtime. Plus, they didn't always have a lot of food in their kitchen, and there were only so many times he could order out for moo goo gai pan before they both got sick of it. "What do you have?"

"A small thing of brandy that Shelley accidentally left here last weekend, a bottle of soy sauce, half a bag of kidney beans and some vanilla extract." She goes silent for a few seconds, almost as though she's rifling through a fridge or a pantry or something. "Oh, and I guess a few eggs."

"Shit, Quinn, whatever happened to your bacon addiction? And you could scramble up those eggs and throw in the beans and top it off with the brandy and have a Puck-lette."

She laughs, again, and Puck cannot help but smile. He's making her laugh. "I ran out of bacon over the weekend. Is a Puck-lette _anything_ like an alcoholic omelette? Or alcoholic scrambled eggs?"

"It's an omelette for people with high class and low ability in actually keeping eggs together in the pan. Sarah always liked it."

"You gave Sarah alcohol for dinner? _Such_ an enabler."

"Of course not! I made hers with Kool-Aid or, sometimes, orange juice instead. And no, before you ask, I did _not _spike my little sister's Puck-lettes."

"Good. That would be weird and creepy if you had." Their conversation goes silent for about a moment, and he can hear her breathing on the other end of the line. It's awkward for him, not knowing what's going through her head right now and not having any of her numerous facial expressions to pick up on to help with that. He's not used to the lack of knowing. "Hey, Puck?" Her question pierces through the silence.

"Yeah?"

"I kinda need to get going." He can hear muffled voices in the background, and a flash of jealousy surges through his body. It's probably snooty Mathilde and Shelley and her other Yale brainiac friends ready to whisk her away for a mid-week trip to save the world's sea otter population, but they get to see her, talk to her, relate to her in ways that he never could. And he suddenly feels inadequate, which is not a feeling he is used to feeling. "I'll text you later about how the Puck-lette turns out?"

He grins. "I hope it's the best one ever made. See ya."

"Bye."

The phone goes silent on the other end, and he thinks of the things he could have said but didn't. Anything that would have revealed the depth of how he felt, for instance, or that he missed her, or that California actually kinda sucks for most people who aren't Brad Pitt or fucking Brad Pitt - damn Angelina. It's not the same here as he thought it was going to be - so many people had had the same idea before him, and knew how to market themselves better, and he wasn't going to be some pool cleaning magnate before he was twenty - and it's not the same without her. Things he has learned.

They are more things than he learned during his entire senior year, at least.

It's times like this when he realizes that she's actually the closest thing to love he's ever found. And fuck if he's going to say anything like that out loud, because he's got a reputation to uphold and all that shit, but it's _true_.

He thinks he probably loves Quinn. It's not even a thinking thing necessarily, but excluding that one time in a hospital a few years ago, he's never really said it to anyone who wasn't related to him. And he can be excused for that one time, because emotions running high and tense that day, but it doesn't mean that it wasn't true then, or now. So maybe he does love Quinn. What good is that going to do him in the here and now? None. She's not here, she's on the other side of the country, and she probably doesn't feel that way about him, not at all. If she could meet and marry a future Senator at Yale, and have little future Senator babies, why would she _ever _want to be with a guy who barely passed high school and would never rise above shitty jobs like pool cleaner for the rest of his life? Shit. Given the choice between the two, he'd fuck the future Senator too. Even if it was a guy.

He's never felt so alone before in his life, and yet, there are a few million people in this city. More people than he's ever been around, and he's more alone than ever.

He wants to crack open a bottle of beer right now, kick back and relax; he wants to forget about his wallowing and move on. Except, as he checks his fridge, he has even less food than Quinn does, and a quick inspection of his wallet shows he has precisely enough to pay for gas to get to Jill's house tomorrow - his weekly Wednesday job - but not anything more. And he's all out of alcohol.

He fries up the last egg in his fridge, dices up a small bell pepper his neighbor Emily gave him over the weekend from her window garden, and eats it in solidarity with a girl three thousand miles away. It's not quite a Puck-lette - it would need the beer, or some of Shelley's brandy, and definitely more than one egg - but the sentiment is still there.

It's the best one he's ever had.

* * *

**Quinn**: omg it was so gross but so good  
**Puck**: told ya babe  
**Puck**: next time try it with peppers  
**Quinn**: ...am i seriously taking cooking advice from you?  
**Puck**: are u ;)  
**Quinn**: if you hear about a yale student dying of food poisoning you're at fault here  
**Quinn**: ok? ok.  
**Puck**: enjoy

He taps off away from the text message screen and smiles. The Puck-lette has invaded the Ivy walls of Connecticut and didn't send Quinn recoiling all the way to New Hampshire in horror. It can officially be labeled as a success.

What he doesn't realize at the time is that their short text message exchange is the last time he'll talk to her until December. They never were much for the small talk to pass the time, but he doesn't care to think that it'll take that long - until they can see each other again - until he knows that she's okay. Even though he's pretty sure that if something was to happen to Quinn, not only would he have heard about it like a million times over, but he would have already sufficiently kicked whoever's ass was responsible for doing it to her. Still.

The winter holidays are a long, long way away when it's only October at the start.


	3. Winter: Worlds Collide

He's been back in Lima for a few days now - they did the whole menorah thing on the first night of Hanukkah, and his sister burned the latkes on accident, as she tends to do; later, he still kicked her ass at the dreidel game, as much as he had been reluctant to play. Somehow, spinning the dreidel and thinking of the miracle of Hanukkah relaxes him, in a strange way.

It's good to be home.

It's strange to be there without Quinn lurking around every corner, though, but she's still off at Yale for another week or two. If she even comes back, now that she's seen how good she can have it outside of Ohio.

He and Sam are kicked back in his living room one day; Sarah's upstairs in her bedroom with her friends Jenna and Tessa. They're working on some weird project for their English class involving construction paper monster posters, and so he can have Sam down here playing video games. Which is considerably more awesome than their lame project, he thinks. Even if they _are_ making monsters.

He throws his controller down onto the coffee table and sinks back against the soft throw pillows his mother likes to litter the couch with. It's not the same as when he could sink back against his own bed, but it's a weird form of comfort nevertheless. "Dude, you're _so _dead right now. I win. Again."

"Says you. _I'll be back_," Sam says, doing his best Terminator impression, complete with perfect inflection. "Right about -" He looks up at the screen and counts down on his fingers until his avatar pops back up, with full health this time. "_Now_." He runs toward where Puck's avatar is standing, and aims his shot toward him, as Puck scoops up his controller and fires a shot or two at Sam. The battle begins again. "Have you heard from Quinn lately?"

"No. Have you?" He pops off a round or two in Sam's direction and ducks behind a pile of rubble and debris, to hide from Sam's retaliation.

"She called me over Thanksgiving to ask what Stevie and Stacey's shirt sizes are. I think she wants to buy them some sort of Yale shirt for Christmas." A barrage of bullets from Sam's gun rains down all around him.

He feels his jealousy rising to the surface again; although, if it's more aimed at Sam for hearing from her or Stevie and Stacey for getting what would surely be awesome gifts, he's not sure. Even if they were just really boring blue and gray t-shirts or sweatshirts. They would still be picked out by Quinn, and that made them more awesome than average by default. "Oh."

"You two still cool?"

"Shit. I don't know."

"Look, man, if there's one thing I know about Quinn - she's _not_ good at hiding her feelings. She tries, you can tell she does, but she fails at it more often than not."

"Yeah." Sam has a point - Sam always manages to have a point when it came to things, which was unnerving and a little awkward. But it's a good thing to have, especially in the absence of his usual companion.

He fires another shot, and another, and finally lands one through Sam's torso. "So, uh, dude, you're fucking _dead_ again. For good this time. No more zombies."

"Whatever." Sam says, setting the controller down. "So, you got any chips or anything? I'm starving, and you never know what Carole's going to make for dinner."

"My mother's on this nutty health food craze now. Something about cutting back on calories or saving the world or something. I don't even fucking know, man. I leave for a few months and my mother's buying kale chips and _lentils_ and weird shit like that. This whole town's gone to shit without me. Next thing I know, you're going to tell me that Finn and Rachel broke up. Again."

"Uh," Sam started to say, before changing the topic. "Maybe you should come back, then. Make it _un_-shit again."

"Or maybe I should _never_ come back." He balls up a sheet of scrap paper that rested on the coffee table and throws it against the wall. "It all seemed so much easier when we were all in high school."

"Speaking as someone who is still _in_ high school -"

"Shut up."

"- it's not."

"Yeah, you say that now. But, wait a year until you're out and in New York, and you'll be crying to me, 'Oh, Puck, I should have listened to you that day you kicked my ass at X-Box,' and I'll just smirk in silence."

Sam nods. "So, about those chips."

"I have Doritos and Lays in my room. Next to the bed. Go get 'em." As Sam runs to his room, Puck sits back on the couch and reflects. Yeah, so, he just owned Evans at video games - _again_. It was getting to be too easy to beat him; he may have to move on and find someone else - someone new- to play against.

Or maybe it was just that he wanted to avoid any discussion of Quinn, until he could talk to the girl herself.

Maybe that was it, after all.

* * *

**Puck**: hey q when u gettin to town  
**Quinn**: late on saturday.  
**Puck**: r u stayin w ur mom  
**Quinn**: yeah. but i do want to see you while i'm here :)  
**Quinn**: ...you are still here, right? i know hanukkah ended like a week ago  
**Quinn**: you didn't go back to california already did you?  
**Puck**: chill im still here

He sits there, poised with his fingers over the keys, trying to think of how to phrase the next thing that he wants to say. He wants to say that he wants to see her too, without sounding like he's needy and needs to see her. But yet - she's the one who remembers when Hanukkah ended, even though she's not Jewish - hell, he had to look that one up himself, and he had the bar mitzvah and everything. Finally, after a moment's hesitation, he types in a reply to his reply:

**Puck**: come by any time

Shit. It's worked before.

**Quinn**: ;)

What is a damn winking face supposed to mean? Hell, it could mean that she got sand stuck in her eye. Or snow. They don't have much sand in Connecticut in December, he doesn't think, but they do have snow. Or maybe she has some brilliant plan up her sleeve. He wouldn't doubt her. Not that he ever did, but certainly not anymore.

* * *

_Ring._ _Ring. Knock._

He almost flies off the couch, before sauntering over to the door. She remembers their code from the summer: two rings, followed immediately by a knock. It's a way to know that it's them, and not the pizza guy or some pimply-faced middle school kid trying to sell magazine subscriptions to go to band camp next summer in order to learn the alternate - and vastly superior - uses for a flute.

He peeks out the window. She's wearing some matching blue-green scarf and hat and gloves combination that only serves to make her look hotter. It looks like she's wearing the ocean on her body, knit waves pouring down her features like a cascade of water.

"Hey," she says, with practiced ease, peeling off her winter clothes, leaving her with just her dress and tiny brown boots on.

The motions of it all drives him wild with desire. He wants to pin her against the wall, have her kick off those ridiculous boots and shed the dress and warm her up in other ways than that shell of blue-green - is that maybe what they call _turquoise_? - knit fuckery. But he refrains. From most of it, anyway. "Hey," he says in reply, "take your shoes off."

She obliges, leaving them tucked underneath the end table that his mother left by the front door, before turning back to him. "It's been a while," she says, licking nervously at her lips. "I don't think we've really talked since - October?"

"When I had you try the Puck-lette." He sits back down on the couch, and has her sit next to him, patting a cushion to show her that there is a spot for her there.

"Yeah. That." She smiles, almost as though she has a secret that she's dying to tell him. "I made Puck-lettes for my exam review sessions."

"Good?"

"Between the six of us, I think we ate about thirty - so, yeah. Three of the girls asked for the recipe. And Jackie's Macadamia nut brownies remained untouched until the very end. Probably because she overcooked them and Katie's allergic to nuts, but I felt vindicated."

"Were they surprised when you said it wasn't made with champagne and caviar?" He feels somewhat vindicated too. Partially for the success of his Puck-lette, but partially because normal people apparently _did_ go to Yale, if Jackie and Katie were any indication.

She shrugs. "Not really? They seemed to like it. Even with whatever random things I had laying around."

"Once you have a Puck-lette, it ruins you for _all_ the other eggs."

"Is that _supposed_ to be about more than just some omelette recipe you gave me over the phone?" She arches an eyebrow and tilts her head forward toward him. "Because I _thought_ the saying was, if you go black, you don't go back."

"You're looking at the wrong Puckerman if that's what you want, babe."

"No, I'm pretty sure I'm looking at the right one." She glides her fingers along the seam of the blanket that rests on the back of the couch. "I'm not interested in your brother, or anyone else for that matter."

"So -"

"So, I've been wanting to see you for the past four months. Not Finn, nor Sam, nor your younger half-brother whom I've never met, nor anyone else here. _You_. While everyone else is talking about how to fundraise for Syria and what we can do for the victims of Hurricane Sandy, I want to talk to you. You're easy. You're not complicated like everyone else. You're easy, but there are layers, and that's what I lo-" She stops. "-_like_ about you."

"There aren't 'layers' to me," he says in vain protest, but he's instead focusing on the word she cut short. Locate? Look? Dare he think it - _love_?

"You're pretty much a jerk to just about everyone I've ever seen you interact with. But you're somehow softer when you're around me." She pauses, allowing her eyes to mist over, however slightly. "Or Beth. Those are called _layers_."

He smirks. "Babe, that's because you're not like everyone else. You don't piss me off regularly, which makes you instantly better than - well, yeah, everyone. And that's what I lo - _like_ - about you too."

She furrows her brow. "Are you imitating me, Puckerman? Because that's -" And he kisses her, pulling her close to him, enclosing her cheeks in the fold of his palms; he kisses her, feeling the enticing warmth of her mouth beneath him, feeling her lips open against his and her lower lip drop in that enticing manner that he knew all too well. He continues to kiss her, breathing her in, because - _fuck_ if this doesn't feel good, because it _does_, in so many different ways. It's not longing or wistful or any of those sentimental words that he could have used to describe their last one - she's looking at him with what he can only describe as lust in her eyes.

"_Quinn_ -" he whispers against her lips, and she swallows her name with a flick of her tongue and a nearly-imperceptible gulp. The arch of her eyebrow shows to him that she isn't questioning what she's doing - not that he would want her to. He wants her to want him as much as he wants her. Anything less wouldn't be very fun for either of them.

"Yeah?" She reaches behind her and flicks at her hair, shorn short at the ends in what appears to be a popular style. At least, if girls on both coasts were wearing it. It looks like Emily's. "What -"

"You are too goddamn perfect," he says, before crushing his mouth against hers again, and he swears that he can feel her lips move into a smile at his words.

* * *

Her dress is pooled at her feet, and his hands are hovering over the precipice of her waist; her bra is unhooked and laying askew, crossed over her arms. "Puck, get this thing _off_ me!" she exclaims, shaking her arms at him. He moves his hands up to palm the side of her breasts as he moves it down her arms and throws it somewhere behind him; he kisses a spot on the underside of her breast, before taking her nipple inside his mouth and sucking on it, feeling the pert tip under his tongue. And she throws her head back, her hair covering the back of his pillow, and he is somehow glad they found it within themselves to make it to his room without spontaneously combusting in the middle of the hallway. May have been the sex ed class he never wanted to give Sarah. He takes his hand that isn't supporting her waist and moves it back behind her head, feeling the silken strands of hair beneath his grasp; he weaves it between his fingers and holds on for dear life.

She has him already only in his boxers, and the only thing left on her is a flimsy pair of panties that seems to match the bra he so callously discarded - off-white, with tiny pink bows. _Princess panties_, he thinks. He hooks his finger inside the hip line of her underwear and slides them down her legs, and kicks the dress off her feet; she tugs down his boxers and grasps his cock between her delicate little fingers. "Damn it, Quinn," he says, between gritted teeth, "can't you warn a guy before you do something like that? Could give me a heart attack here."

She smiles an impish little smile and loosens her grasp, but only just enough to say she did so. "Like that?" she says, her voice a seductive lilt. Damn this girl. _Damn_ what she does to him, because her grasp only serves to make him harder. Damn this girl and her perfectly matched everything, even down to her bra and panties, and her way of knowing everything - including how to turn him on without even trying, and - and, _everything _about her. She's the exception to every rule he's set up in his life, and he's not even sure how she managed to do that in the first place.

"You were doing it right before," he says, arching forward to brush his nose against hers, capturing her lips between hers. "You on the pill?" She nods silently; she moves her fingers to tangle in his chest hair. There would be no pregnancy scandal part two to plague them now. Yet. And with that assurance, he plunges into her, and she moans slightly, her mouth forming a perfectly rounded '_o_' against his lips as he does so. He couldn't make her give up her hopes and Yale, and he isn't going to make her choose now. Especially not when he doesn't even know if there's a future for them. He cups her breast in one hand, as he feels her massage the small of his back with the back of her hand.

She bucks her hips upward, at an incline, trying to pull him deeper inside her, and he can't help but try to bury himself in her. Every part of him burns and aches to be inside her, and he slips his tongue inside her mouth and tangles his tongue with hers as he courses in and out, thrusting back and forth. Her eyes are glazed over and dilated with pure, undeniable lust; they're a shade that he has never seen before. And yet, he wants to see it over and over again; he locks his gaze on hers and memorizes it.

Quinn is all he can see.

They go like this for a while, her taking him in as he gives to her what he can. "Puck," she says, at last, almost on a whine, "I -" And she doesn't even have to say anything, because he can feel it before she can say anything, the tightening and clenching - the fucking _awesome _tightening and clenching, at that, followed by first tentative waves of her orgasm rushing over his cock. She presses her forehead against his, her face slick with sweat. And her grin is the most natural, beautiful thing he has ever seen. Which is saying something, when it comes to Quinn.

It's enough to make him come as well, crying out into her mouth as he does so. It feels so good - it feels so _right_.

Him and Quinn. Nothing else. No one else. Ever.

* * *

"Puck?" She whispers his name, almost on a breath, almost as if she can't believe that she's actually here with him. It does feel like it's been an awful long way in coming - more than three years, if not close to a lifetime. They're laying there tangled in each other's limbs; she's buried into his chest, and he has his arms wrapped around her. It feels kind of familiar, in a way, except that instead of layers of summertime clothing, there's nothing between them but air. It's the closest he's ever really been to her - that one other time, she had shoved him out of bed after it was all over, clasping her Cheerios uniform to her chest, without so much as a goodbye.

He turns to face her. "Quinn?"

She sighs. "I don't want to go back to Connecticut. Not without you."

"I thought you had all your world-saving, future-bathroom-scandals of America friends up there to make you forget about me." Her sighs, little known to her, of course, could break his heart without even trying.

"Didn't we already establish before that I could _never _forget about you?" She places a hand over his chest and buries her face into his side; her lips brush along the side of his ribs, and he strokes her hair with absent-minded abandon.

"I like hearing it," he says, and it's true - he doesn't want to be forgotten, because there would be nothing that would suck more than to be forgotten. And that's how he's felt for most of his life, at least until she came around and showed him that there was an otherwise. "What do you say - you, and me? In Connecticut?"

"In _Connecticut_?"

"There's nothing wrong with Connecticut," he says, "except that I'm not there."

"That's true," she says, almost without thinking about it, "but I thought you _liked_ California."

"But you're not there. And without you, it kinda really sucks there, and I'm not going to make you give up Yale just to chase me all around the country." He flexes his bicep and grins down at her. "So - what do you say? You, me, the big state of Connecticut?"

"It's a big step to move in together," she says, "but - you know, we can make it work, and you'd like it there once you got adjusted, even if there's not a lot of sun this time of year -" She pauses for a moment. "And Connecticut's not really _big_, you know."

"I know," he says, "but it's big enough for the two of us."

"That it is." She curls up into his arm and clutches onto him, "it's going to be nice to have you there."

He could only kiss the top of her head and agree - she smells like that same flower she did way back when they were last like this, in her room, but it seems different somehow this time. Instead of smelling like she's saying goodbye, it feels like they have their entire future laid out in front of them, ready for the taking.

* * *

As the calendar shifts from December over to January, he drives away from Lima, back to California, back to the crappy apartment with Emily the awesome pepper-gifting neighbor, he knows that he's not alone this time. And won't be alone again for a long, long time.

Because, curled up in the passenger seat next to him, is a half-asleep Quinn; her arm is propped up on the doorframe, her hair is pooling over one shoulder and masking her hand from his sight. Her other hand rests on top of the middle console, and he reaches over with one hand to stroke it absent-mindedly.

It's a long way to California. And it's an even longer way back to Connecticut.

But with her by his side, he thinks - _hell, maybe I can be the first President who cleaned pools and had a child while still in high school_. He could dream higher. And get a fresh start, with the one thing from his old life he still wants to hold onto more than anything.

He can get out of the crappy apartments of the world any day now.

-_fini_-

* * *

**Author's Note**: _Thank you to everyone who read, reviewed, favorited or alerted this! It was interesting to see how my idea of what ended up being early season four interacted with what it actually was. This story would not have been possible without the help of my dear friend C., who listened to all of my Quick ramblings for the entire summer and fall and helped make this story into what it became. Hope you all enjoyed it._


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